I believe in attraction at first sight. I believe in like, and in lust, at first sight. But do I believe in love at first sight?
Nope. Here’s why.
Like life, there’s really no accurate definition of love. It’s a level of feeling you have towards another person, but only you are going to identify it by measuring your emotions. If humans were more like dashboards, we might have a meter on hearts that blink red when we’re in love, but alas, we do not. We are responsible for our own definitions of love.
But we can get close to a universal definition by agreeing on a few things about love. One is that it is supremely sacred and important to us –- a connection that most of us will use to determine the majority of our lives by pairing us with a significant other.
If love is so important to us, we need to elevate our definitions of it above the spontaneous feelings of attraction, familiarity, and desire that sometimes combine when you first look a new person in the eyes and you skip a breath.
The human body has all sorts of great tricks to ensure that our species doesn’t stop reproducing, and one of them is this very phenomena –- being emotionally attracted to a new person when something in their demeanor responds to what you long for. Is it fair to call this love? No. In fact, it only cheapens our meaning of it.
Real love needs to be proven to you by the other person, and most importantly, by yourself. Real love needs to come from knowing another person, their knowing you, and in finding that your feelings for them increase and maintain when you have the full picture –- not just that first impression.
So while I enjoy the head rush that accompanies a first meeting with someone that I’d rather be waking up next to than be sleeping with, I refuse to mistake it for love. That sort of myth-making is comforting, but it also allows you to enter a relationship under false pretenses, obscuring your chances of knowing if you have real love, or just love at first sight.
What do you think, readers? Care to prove me wrong by sharing your own experiences with love at first sight?
19 thoughts on “The Myth of Love at First Sight”
I have and am experiencing this now. Just one look and he had me beat. I am not sure if he feels the same my heart tells me he does, my gut instinct, but I am taken, married in fact, unhappily but still married and I would never cheat. I don’t believe in hurting others, but we cannot stop smiling when we talk to each other and his eyes are warm and beautiful, we laugh and I can be myself with him..sadly we have to part ways soon and I have to forget him how can I? He has really gotten to me and I have never been the soppy kind. Even when I met my other half I wasn’t blown away, but slowly something grew , I guess he grew on me!! But THIS I wasn’t expecting or looking for anything…I feel like a blooming fool, as my husband is devoted to me and me to him…why did this happen i don’t understand it….
Love at first sight appears to have more to do with precognition — a premonition of a romance to come. Case in point: I first spotted this girl “among a group of people” from about “200 yards away” and felt something was up regarding her. I never saw her face properly. I didn’t have lusty feelings for her (at the time, but later did) — this rules out attraction theories. There was no sign of her noticing me. I had no belief in premonitions at the time. Later, due to ridiculously super-unlikely events, we met and got together, and had mutual feelings for each other from the beginning. I don’t know about actual “love at first site,” however, I now I believe that “love at first sight” is more of a sense of things to come.
Updates;
Today was time that i start the fight
i couldnot be more patient to feel i m unbalanced due to a relation love from one side
i had to figure out … i asked him to end up wz the other woman, or to go out of his life final
he fight back with me, telling me this decission should come from him and by his way
so, i said it clearly i am ouot of your life
i end up the call… my heart was bleeding it is real love from my side
but if one person only feel love while the other one no… it is really painful but no need to go through that pain it is terrible
but after few minutes passed like days , i got an sms he said to me to hold on, we can fix it
i do not imagine what is that
is it love inside him and he do not want to admit it coz i was so hard on him in our relation due to some differences or there is hidden thing like the other girl is the one who rejected him????
But i know, there are lots of women specially that women can steal a man in a relation wt problem.
So, i am again instead of being happy that he asked me to be patient, i ask myself why he respond like this
is it mis trust?? do love succeed while mistrust exist????
love at first sight:
I have experienced it. and, yes a relationship ensued and yes, it was real, not a fantasy and I do believe
it happens. I am guilty of ending it as the person was much younger than I, but I felt the sadness of letting
it go…..It is special, it is a form of love, but we choose love. It is a decision. It is difficult to digest from
the greater perspective of one’s heart. Love has many aspects. Why must we question life? Wouldn’t
we be happier experiencing all the highs and lows? Love takes courage to take emotional risks and we
must really sincerely want it and the other person also must truly want it or people get hurt and who needs
that? I was dancing and locking eyes and people got mesmerized by our connection and it is beautiful.
Judgement if for god, not humans, I challenge any skeptic worth their salt to look deepe into their own
soul to find their own heart’s desires and I have faith in the beauty of all souls. So be it!
Butterflyqueen
Love at first sight? yeah! I have experienced that. It is eye locking. It is because the eyes are the
windows to the soul. If you are awake , then you know by direct eye to eye communication. I may be
speaking of the soul connection here. Yes, it happens to me.. It is glorious! People envy it, want it,
cherish it just the same as they cherish love. The skeptics…hmm Let me ask you.. Look at their life and
assess their level of happiness, their joy. That happiness quotient is far too over-looked in this world. Life
is short. The soul is eternal. When you’re awake and you are engulfed with starry eyes gazing into one
another’s eyes , you are connecting at a much deeper level. I , personally am clairvoyant and I “see the
face ” of the next male before we meet. To me , it isn’t really love at first sight unless you choose to
be asleep in your physical body disconnected from your soul..If you live from your soul ,it is a natural
phenomena…Butterflyqueen
Maybe it is not the correct statement, but i truely need advice…
it has first start as love at sight, we found ourselves attracted so much …. then suddenly we started having trouble…
One time, i discovered he started dating another woman and went to paris to meet her and know each other more.
Suddenly we boke up and he ended our relation …. 2 months later i heard that he discovered he do not love her
So, we started talking, i still feel love to him but he act irrogant that he is trying to find way out to break up with her and he still do not feel he love me… he needs time to fix our relation and he might feel love back …
so, this is really humulating me but till now even what happened i feel there still destiney exist!!!
How to know the truth and how to choose my way!!!!!
What about the “Anima” “Animus” theory by Carl Jung?
I had a “love @ first sight” encounter many years ago. We became friendly and I became emotionally connected to him. We were never involved sexualy. However I care and love this man. Our friendship has had it’s ups and downs. Currently it is on the down side. He is in a relationship. I have been told he is a soul mate but we will not be together. There have been times that he has hurt me, probably through my own expectations and disappointments. But I still care and love this man. Is he just a “mirror” a relection of what I’d like to be? Was he sent to me to liberate harboured, pented up feelings I’ve withheld within for long?
I agree. In order to love someone, you have to know someone. Know their background, past, interests, etc. You cannot look at someone that you find attractive and say, “I’m in love” or “when I first seen him, it was love at first sight.” I truly believe that it takes time to love someone. Some people that there can be a such thing as “love at first sight.” In this case, it’s “lust at first sight.” The reason I would say lust is because looking at someone and falling in love by their being so attracted to them would be considered lust over love.
I would like to think that there is such a thing as “love at first sight”. At least that’s how I felt when I first met my late wife back in 1981 at the Great Lakes Naval Base outside of Chicago, Ill. But I was 25 years old.
Now (and maybe even back then) I would say its more “lust at first sight. However in defense of lust, I believe in conjunction with all the other healthy factors that are needed in a relationship lust can and will grow into love. If the “other” factors are present.
But to love someone especially unconditionally takes TIME. Love can’t happen in a nano second. Lust can. Getting those butterflies in your stomach when I look at a beautiful woman or when her and I happen to glance at each other at the “right time” is NOT love. Its the little head telling the big head….I like her. Or, I lust for her. Which twice in my lifetime, lust did turn into love. Obviously, the other criteria for loving someone was present from both of us.
You might love a view of a mountain top from afar or a beautiful bird flying by, but loving someone instantly is impossible. Unless of course, you are a recluse that only comes out of your home every 7 years and happens to venture upon an attractive…….well, just in case. You never know.
How true, love seems to have an infinite definition.
Just in my experience, what defines real/true love is the word; unconditional.
What I would look for in a relationship in the beginning stage would be ‘in like’ rather than
‘in love’.
After 2 LT relationships in my 51 years, I can truly say, I liked and unconditionally loved only 1 of them.
As in every life path; growing, changing, learning, transforming, it would be difficult as an individual to categorize or universalize a ‘feeling’. It just cant be done.
There are so many aspects; soul contracts, karma, fate, timing, maturity, birth/progressed astrological charts, and on and on.
That is why it would be difficult to generalize and say we all can or cannot experience love at first site. We are all on a different path/journey.
That is why we have our earth ‘guides/counselors’ here on this site and others.
Thank you to all our psychic friends here and the opportunity to expand our knowledge of ‘life’.
I think we all can use ‘help’ now and then so, thank you and a heartfelt appreciation to you all.
Hi Verbena,
Very well put…..as you mentioned, there are many different forms of Karmic connections.
And I try to explain the difference, during a reading, to my clients. But as you mention,some of them are ” stuck ” upon the movie-type theme of an ever-lasting romantic soul-mate.
( Which is why, when I read or teach, I never even use that word.)
Blessed Be )O(
Gina Rose ext.9500
I think we need more articles in here explaining the different types of Karmic connections souls can and do have we each other.
Bingo Verbena 🙂 you are wise and pretty terrific yourself! It is kind of a guy thing the sad thing is over thinking makes you miss out on the unfolding of what is natural. Its kind of like when a Doctor first becomes a doctor in his scientific mind he can not prove miracles so he just brushes it off like baaaa hum bug but before he retires he will experince it first hand the many unexplained magic of miracles that his scientific mind can’t explain. Love is love we can’t can it, box it, or put all kinds of silly notions to it or we muck up the flow. I believe there is a time to allow that to unfold naturally and the message is to have some sanity to it. There are those that we read for both men and women whom we can see that their partners care and love them very much but get stuck and frozen by fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) because they are in the head about the feelings of love in disbelief that they do not give themselves permission to just love and be loved. Of course I do see Max’s point and Gina Rose’s on those that fall in love once a week LOL its more like obsession not love at first sight. Enough of my mouth hehehe have a wonderful blessed evening my beautiful gifted colleagues.
Many Blessings & Cyber Hugs
~Abigail~
Hi Pat-
What you wrote makes me think of that song, by Roberta Flack, “The first time ever I saw your face.”
🙂
miss krystal
I think love at first site is simply a saying to convey we dig someone upon first meeting or the pre-meeting of glances and smiles.
In the never ending quest to find love, I think people read too much into these instances. Just enjoy them for what they are and enjoy meeting a new person and stop overthinking everything!
Hi Verbena,
Have I witnessed love at first sight…yes, many years ago…( that person is now crossed over….we were both young and preparing for our wedding date when Mark was killed in a motorcycle accident).
I agree with Abigail,I wish that everybody could experience that type of connection at least once in their life.
But, what Max wrote is practical, wise and very grounded advice, and coming from a male point of view , I feel it should be at least considered by all the gals reading it….
……because I personally know many women who every single guy they meet or date once….” they feel a special connection with”. And then they are broken hearted when ” he ” doesn’t recognize that same instant connection.
So, I agree with Abigail and you as well, but I guess you could say that Max does make sense to me too….I’m middle of the road here I guess.
By the way, referring to our last connection you asked me a question….no I do not have astrology software as it pertains to locations and re-locating…but it does sound extremely interesting ( and fun)….I intend to, when I get the time, check into some of that software.
Blessed Be )O(
Gina Rose ext.9500
from Artist PAT ILOTT, when I first met my husband, I thought immediately “what a lovely open face he has” it was sort of inviting. That was around 30 years ago.
Hello Max,
I guess I’ll have to comment on this from several perspectives. Love is an emotion as we have all agreed however it certainly is not logical. It seems when we pick at it and make it a logical thing we sometimes talk ourselves out of real heart felt feelings or we can just use it as an excuse not to be open to the possibilites of having a major life altering connection such as the Love at first sight phenomena. I agree that the primal instinct is very much a part of what some seem to relate that as a love reaction. I myself have had those very primal feelings over my years on this earth but they were very different than the love at first sight that I experienced in this life. Yes I have been one of those ones that can say it happens. When I met my husband the first thing that washed over me was that is the man I’m going to marry and guess what he felt the very same way about me. It was not logical it did not make sense and totally blew people away. He went home and told his roomates he just met his future wife LOL Not every one who gives you a shiver is a love, that just means all your libido vibes are in working order 🙂 But to say it is not real or never happens is something I have to disagree with as I have experienced it first hand. I wish everyone would experience that at least once in their lives. I’ve had clients in my therapy practice and my psychic practice tell me they have never been in love and I find that a very sad thing. Love makes the world go round its an emotion that requires action or it just stays a fantacy.
Many Blessings
~ Abigail~
Hi,
Great article-thanks for posting it.
I agree-that initial, wonderful, heady feeling when we recognize a partner on several levels-Wow! Is that love-no, far from it. Love is later-if and when that initial powerful feeling has expanded to include strong positive affection for his habit to spend 20 minutes driving around a parking lot before choosing an empty space or her habit of being 20 minutes late to finish dressing for any party. Or feeling affection for and finding true beauty in each others warts, scars, and the tatoo of someone else’s name on your partner’s body or the temporary extra 20 pounds you put on just now after you quit smoking.
By then the trust, admiration and comfort that your partner is there for you have grown into love.
Over the years of doing this work, I have, as I am certain we all have, received many calls from clients with bruised or broken hearts who report that they “fell in love on the first date” or first week. For the most part, I don’t think falling in love at first sight is successful.
Maryanne
Ext. 9146
Max,
I agree that one must “know” you to love you. I feel that lust, initial attraction, even resonating with another’s energy is potent and alluring. I believe if folks delve deeper they would say, “She invoked my spirit and inspired my senses to take notice…I am oh-so intrigued.” I believe people fall in love with the “idea” of each other in hopes that the reality eventually matches up. When someone tells me they experience love at first sight; I equate that to: they recognize someone from, perhaps another lifetime. More frequently it is: they see enough positive to desire the chance to explore the possibilities. A positive energy exchange should not be ignored, but not all fun paths worth exploring culminate into romantic love. * Great post Max!